This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Called a moderate, he wasn't a finalist in 2009 to replace Souter. Conservatives may support him. Liberals may object, but both sides have other preferred choices. In their April 10 Slate.com article headlined, "Who Should Replace Justice Stevens," Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick named Garland, Kagan and Judge Diane Wood as the frontrunners, then listed other possibilities, some familiar, others less known.
In his April 10 article titled, "Justice John Paul Stevens announces his retirement from the Supreme Court," Washington Post writer Robert Barnes quoted Alliance for Justice's Nan Aron saying:
"Republicans will oppose any nominee sent up by the president. This is already a court that's tilted in favor of large corporations and special interests. Justice Stevens' replacement ought to be a person who understands how decisions affect the rights of everyday Americans."
On April 9, the Alliance for Justice web site praised Stevens' "Historic Legacy of Championing Constitutional Values....his distinctive voice will be greatly missed," and not likely replaced by his successor.
Diane P. Wood, Judge on the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago and University of Texas School of Law grad. She then clerked for Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, worked as a lawyer-advisor in the State Department's Office of Legal Advisor before entering private practice. She also taught law at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago where she was also associate dean. During the Reagan administration, she served as special assistant to the Associate Attorney General, and as the Antitrust Division's Deputy Assistant Attorney General for international, appellate and policy matters under Clinton before becoming a federal judge.
In his May 2009 New Republic article headlined, "Good Wood," Jeffrey Rosen called her "The second coming of Ruth Bader Ginsburg," quoting University of Chicago's "libertarian scholar" Richard Epstein saying:
"She has an ideal judicial temperament," admired by "her colleagues, her clerks, and the lawyers who practice before her....open to argument on all questions, and the lawyers who appear before her know they will get a respectful hearing. She is theoretically rigorous but nondogmatic. I think that her nomination should be greeted with acclamation by Democrats and Republicans alike."
Perhaps the former, not the latter if the National Review's Ed Whelan ("bench memos," May 22, 2009) comment is indicative, calling Wood "a hard-Left judicial activist and aggressor on culture-war issues." More saying she's "ready to invent a constitutional right to same-sex marriage....believes (including) 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance violates" the Constitution's Establishment Clause, (stating "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"), is "more extreme" than other judges on abortion, and aggressively pursues "her ideological agenda."
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
